The SCRUB Act

The SCRUB Act

OUR POSITION: CSS opposes the bill and urges members of Congress to vote against it.

The Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (SCRUB) Act would establish a new “regulatory review” commission funded at taxpayer expense, charged with the identifying duplicative, redundant or so-called “obsolete” regulations to repeal. It would do nothing to identify the numerous gaps, shortfalls and outdated regulatory standards that leave the public vulnerable to the next public health tragedy.

This commission would only consider the costs to affected industries while ignoring the benefits of oversight. The commission’s goal to achieve a 15 percent reduction in the cumulative cost of regulations would result in the repeal of critical health, safety and environmental safeguards — even when the benefits of these rules are significant, appreciated by the public and far outweigh the costs.

In addition, the bill would create a “cut-go” system that requires any agency issuing a new regulation to remove an existing regulation of equal or greater cost. If the science finds that a substance widely used in commerce is harmful to infants, regulators would have to find some other protection to cut before protecting young children. The bill would make it impossible for agencies to bypass “cut-go” procedures, no matter how urgent the circumstances might be.